Shenmue Dojo

Now maybe this doesn't need it's own topic, but I'm curious as to why they switched how you say his name from Shenmue to Shenmue II? In the first one, Master Chen and the letter (& Ryo) say Zhu Yuanda. When you start playing the 2nd game, every character says Yuanda Zhu. What gives?

Its just the way they speak differently, Japanese people say the last name first and in China its reverse.

I don't see why Ryo would change how he says it

Shenmue 2 was translated differently than Shenmue 1, is all. In Shenmue 2, Xuiying is referred to as Lishao Tao whereas in Shenmue 1, Chen calls her Tao Li Shao. Other than those 2 characters, I'm not really sure if it comes up again, but it's not specific to Zhu. I think the game manuals' character bios also highlight the difference between games.

Yup, i think its a proper fuck up of the translation. But one thing i have to say (and i am sorry, i dont mean to sound offensive!) is that i prefer the back to front types of names, like Tao Lishao, and also Zhu Yuanda. They sound better.

Peter wrote:Yup, i think its a proper fuck up of the translation. But one thing i have to say (and i am sorry, i dont mean to sound offensive!) is that i prefer the back to front types of names, like Tao Lishao, and also Zhu Yuanda. They sound better.

I feel the opposite, haha. Feel like they flow better in Shenmue II.

They also spelled it Shenfa

I thought that "hua" was pronounced "fwa" because of Shenmue :P

Yama wrote:

Peter wrote:Yup, i think its a proper fuck up of the translation. But one thing i have to say (and i am sorry, i dont mean to sound offensive!) is that i prefer the back to front types of names, like Tao Lishao, and also Zhu Yuanda. They sound better.

I feel the opposite, haha. Feel like they flow better in Shenmue II.

I don't think I noticed the difference until my second time through the games, though I tend to agree with Peter here - I think it flows a bit better in the first.

Never understood the "hua" vs. "fa" thing, and don't even try to. In my mind, it's definitely Shenhua (said like it's spelled)

Isn't the second game the first time we hear Master Chen's first name? When Hanhui at Man Mo Temple reads your letter he says "Yaowen Chen, I have heard the name from Lishao Tao".

Yaowen eh? I never heard that before.

You must not pay much attention then, Hanhui says it pretty plainly and I had subtitles on all the time even playing on the dubbed Xbox version.

No subtitles on and I was prolly staring at the thing in the corner

I'm pretty sure both China & Japan have the last name first tradition and this was only done to make the game more comfortable for westerners. Or differing opinions in the localization teams. Which is dumb if you ask me, because the names are so foreign that we wouldn't know which is supposed to be a first or last name anyway so it just adds to the confusion by changing the ordering between games.

Also Shenhua is, according to the Japanese wikipedia, read as Rei Shenfa(玲莎花（レイ・シェンファ）). However, if you search for the Chinese reading of those same characters you get Ling Shahua. I think shahua was what it was originally romanized as so I would go with that. The differences between the Chinese and Japanese readings of certain names and such lead to some annoying discrepancies in the localization.